Chapter 387 - 385: An Unexpected Meeting

Chapter 387: Chapter 385: An Unexpected Meeting

That’s just how people are. You often don’t realize things in the moment, but afterward, you’re left with a sense of guilt and remorse.

After that incident, the child support payments never stopped, but the weekly phone calls that had once harassed Oliver ceased. At first, she thought it was a good thing, but as time went on, she started to feel strange about it.

Whenever she and her son, Neil, happened to mention Blaise, Oliver’s tone was no longer as disgusted as it used to be—or at least, the disgust wasn’t as obvious.

"Your father... perhaps..."

Oliver didn’t know what to say. After a moment’s hesitation, she followed her heart.

"Maybe... he had his reasons..."

Neil still muttered under his breath.

"He’s probably dead."

At school, many students were afraid of Neil. Some even idolized him because of a persistent rumor that his father was in the mob.

For many other rebellious kids, this would have been a cool thing.

But not for Neil. He had been affected by it for years and utterly despised it.

Even now, with everyone terrified of the Otherworld monsters outside, he didn’t think his father could save him. He knew what gangsters were like—they were no match for the regular army, and they were incredibly selfish. His father would be no exception.

But did Neil really know his father?

WHOOM—BOOM! RAT-A-TAT-TAT... BOOM...

The gunfire and explosions, which had quieted down for a while, erupted violently once more. Flashes of light flickered outside—Demons were likely attacking the defensive line again.

Dozens of civilians were huddled in a lecture hall at the school, panicked and uneasy, when two soldiers suddenly burst in.

"Who knows how to use an automatic rifle? Who? Anyone who can use a gun, come with us!"

’Looking for civilians who can use guns... does that mean the casualties among the soldiers outside are so high that they’re about to be overwhelmed?’ The thought made everyone’s heart sink.

"Me! I do! I can use pistols and rifles!"

Neil actually stood up. At sixteen, the American boy was only a size smaller than a full-grown man.

"Neil, are you crazy?!"

A terrified Oliver kept pulling at her son, but she couldn’t move him.

"Me too... I’ve practiced with an M4..."

"I can, too."

...

One after another, a dozen or so people responded.

Among the soldiers who had entered, a sergeant major stared at the mix of people who had stood up. The young, like Neil, still had a hint of childishness on their faces, while the old, like a man in his sixties, were already saying goodbye to their families.

He glanced at those who remained seated—able-bodied men who chose to cower—and muttered, "Cowards."

Provoked by his word, another four or five men stood up, but the rest either genuinely didn’t know how to shoot or chose to remain cowards hiding in their shells.

The sergeant major snorted coldly and said no more. He nodded at the men and women who were standing.

"Follow me!"

The school area was part of a joint defensive position. A company-sized force was stationed around the school’s perimeter, with other fire support deployed in various directions in the surrounding areas, totaling roughly a battalion.

The school itself served as the command center for this sector. However, the original commanding officer had been killed in action; a captain was now in charge.

"Move, move, move! Don’t stop, don’t stop!"

The sergeant major led the way. As they passed the collapsed section of the school building and other areas, they could see soldiers firing into the distance, the sound of gunfire and explosions roaring in their ears.

They finally reached the front line.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT...

A machine gun on the side was spraying bullets into the distance. Neil could even see its overheating barrel slowly turning red.

His breath was shallow, and his heart was pounding. He instinctively glanced at his mother, who had come with him; she wasn’t doing much better.

"Take this, kid! Switch off the safety, use the red-dot sight. No need to line up the sights, just use burst fire!"

"Take this, ma’am..."

The sergeant major began distributing weapons.

Neil looked down at the weapon in his hands. The bloodstains on it hadn’t been wiped off. He trembled, his earlier courage seeming to drain away by half.

"Fire, fire! They’re coming! Open fire!"

RAT-A-TAT-TAT... BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!...

The gunfire erupted like popping corn. Neil shook his head, fighting to overcome his fear as he and his mother leaned against a corner of the wall, periodically peeking out to fire a burst.

"Five o’clock! A tough one is coming! Javelin, get ready! Fire when you have a lock!"

Two soldiers carrying man-portable anti-tank missiles moved forward and set them up. Neil saw a flash of light beside him, and a missile with a trail of fire and smoke shot into the distance.

BOOM—

The explosive flare briefly illuminated the distance, revealing a Demon the size of a small house getting knocked down. A horrific, gaping hole had been torn in its body.

But it wasn’t dead yet; it struggled, still trying to get back up.

"Another one!"

WHOOSH—

Another anti-tank missile flew out.

After another BOOM, the Demon couldn’t get up again.

"AHHHH!!!!"

A scream erupted nearby. One of the women who had come with them was suddenly lifted into the air. In the flickering light, a strange, translucent mark was visible on her neck.

"It’s a Yin Spirit!!!"

A soldier roared in terror.

"Dammit! Flame Gun! Flame Gun! Burn it out!"

Neil didn’t know why the surrounding soldiers were in such a panic, but then he suddenly remembered something.

His classmates had once discussed information about Yin Spirits. A large number of them were invisible to the naked human eye.

In the chaos of battle, at night, and with no Evolvers around, the appearance of a Yin Spirit was a complete nightmare.

A soldier carrying a fuel tank on his back ran forward, shouting as he went.

"Sorry, ma’am! We’ll remember your sacrifice!"

WHOOSH—

A long tongue of fire shot out, aimed directly at the woman still struggling in mid-air.

SCREEE...

A piercing cry rang out as a tall, slender silhouette over three meters high was seared into view by the intense heat.

...

Blaise was frantic. San Francisco was the epicenter of the disaster, and the two most important people in his life were there.

It was a case of whatever you fear most, comes to pass.

The Dawn Association had a Secret Realm in San Francisco, which would have allowed for direct travel.

Unfortunately, the area in the city center with the most severe "touch point" happened to overlap with the Secret Realm’s location.

This particular Secret Realm wasn’t very powerful, so it was shattered instantly by the collision of the Power of the World. The few Association members guarding it were exposed at the touch point, and the Realm’s function as a transit hub was lost.

At that critical moment, the Association members used a Sound Transmission Flower to send a message. They then used the defensive measures left behind by the shattered Secret Realm, such as Demonized Plants, to help the US Military in San Francisco buy time.

They were probably still alive, but couldn’t be contacted at the moment.

Blaise and several of his companions from the Knight Order raced into San Francisco from outside the city in a straight line, casually dispatching any Demons that dared to appear along the way.

All they saw in the dark of night was a landscape of ruins. There was no telling how many people were still alive.

They went straight to Oliver’s house, only to find a half-collapsed building surrounded by bloodstains.

Although Blaise couldn’t smell Oliver or Neil’s scent in the blood, he was still frantic with worry.

"Get lost!"

With a SPLAT of flying flesh and blood,

one of the most common Long-Tailed Salamander Monsters had the upper half of its body blown away by Blaise’s punch. The others caught a glimpse of two mangled human torsos inside its stomach.

"Boss, don’t give up. They must still be alive. Let’s split up and search the area!"

Even now, Maki, standing beside him, was still in the habit of calling Blaise "Boss."

Blaise calmed himself, taking a few deep breaths as he looked at the Demons gradually gathering around them.

"Haaa... Searching like this is stupid. We’ll go straight to where the gunfire is heaviest. They should need our help, and we’re carrying a military directive for them anyway. If Oliver and Neil are still alive, they’re most likely to be there."

Before entering San Francisco, they had encountered incoming US Army reinforcements and had accepted some requests from them.

Several hours had passed since the world "touch." The survival rate for civilians out on their own was extremely low. He could only pray that Oliver and Neil had been rescued by the US Military.

"Ten seconds. Clear out the surroundings, then we head in that direction!"

Blaise pointed toward the distant flickering lights.

The moment he finished speaking, sixteen figures shattered the ground beneath their feet. Using only their fists and kicks, they annihilated all the monsters within a radius of several dozen meters in just a few seconds.

...

"AHHHH—DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE!!!" BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG...

Neil sprayed his rifle, his state frenzied but not reckless. He was targeting points where the others’ firepower was weak, providing suppressive fire. Only when the action of his gun made a KLAK-KLAK-KLAK sound did he sit back, panting wildly.

"Hah... hah... hah..."

With trembling fingers, he grabbed a magazine, ejected the empty one, and slapped the new one in.

"Easy, easy, kid. You’re doing great! If you were active duty, I’d put you in for a medal!"

The sergeant major beside him patted his shoulder and handed him an open bottle of mineral water.

"Have some water!"

The bottle was only a third full and had clearly been drunk from by someone else, but Neil wasn’t a germaphobe, and at a time like this, he couldn’t care less.

He gulped down half of it before passing it to his side.

"Mom, have some water!"

Oliver’s performance wasn’t as good as her son’s, but she was still outstanding among the women. She only took a small sip before handing the bottle back to Neil.

"We’ve got big ones coming! Three of them! No, six!"

A sentry positioned on high ground shouted a warning to those below.

"Dammit! There are more and more of them! Fire the flare guns!"

The captain yelled, looking up.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Three flares shot into the sky in a triangular formation, compensating for the searchlights’ limited field of view. Six enormous monsters came into view through the captain’s binoculars.

"Snipers, take out the ones in front! We’re low on Javelin rounds, try to take down a few with sheer bullet-fire!"

Just as he finished speaking, he saw the two monsters at the front suddenly freeze through his binoculars.

THWACK! THWACK!

The heads of the two Demons—each four meters tall and eight meters long, with bodies like bloated, shell-less beetles—suddenly separated from their bodies, spraying foul blood everywhere.

A broad Magic Steel Weapon was held in Maki’s two hands. Dark red blood was still dripping from the serrations of its two-meter-long blade.

"Lining up for me side-by-side like that? I’d be letting myself down if I didn’t cut you down!"

The six troublesome Demons didn’t last long against Blaise and his team before they were all killed. They also cleaned up the other nearby Demons while they were at it.

Blaise looked at the school area in the distance, lit up by searchlights. This was the sixth military position they had encountered.

They still hadn’t found Oliver and Neil, nor had they found their original Dawn comrades in San Francisco.

Their bodies were long-since soaked in blood and gore. The sixteen of them were like demons returned from Hell, steam rising from their bodies like smoke in the cold night air as they walked step-by-step toward the defensive position.

Maki had already taken his melee weapon from his "portable pocket" and didn’t bother putting it back, simply dragging it behind him.

As they approached, the soldiers at the school position grew tense. Neil almost raised his rifle to shoot but was stopped just in time by the sergeant major.

The captain pumped his arm fiercely, his voice emotional.

"It’s Dawn! I saw a weapon like that once in France! There’s no mistake, it’s the people from the Dawn Association!!"

A strange feeling fluttered in Neil and Oliver’s hearts. As the figures who looked even more terrifying than the monsters drew closer, their eyes grew wider and wider.

PS: First Chapter for Thursday.

The characters for this book are finally established, a few months later than everyone else. Please give this Chapter a lot of likes, readers! Also, it’s the start of the month, so I’m begging for monthly tickets! Please! ╥﹏╥!!